daube de boeuf bourguignon

93% on the practical. Perfect chicken fabrication, nice whipped potatoes, vegetables, etc. Great sauce. Apparently I used too much garnish in the forcemeat and my piping skills need work (which warrants seven points off? wtf?).

Tomorrow I'll be doing a roast, some kind of vegetable. I've got a decent amount of produce on hand and a few mushrooms to compliment the dish, and about eight ounces of my homemade brown stock (which has completely gelatinized in the refridgerator due to its excellent quality) for a nice sauce. I need to get some batteries for my camera, but I'll try and document the event. Everyone should know how to cook a big chunk of beef. It's going to be a lonely dinner unless I can find someone to dine with me. Roommate will be out, girlfriend is gone, don't really know too many people that aren't working/are my friends. I don't even know how many of my friends in the Burgh read this thing anyway.

Donating blood is a good experience. I think watching a vein in your arm fill up a good-sized plastic bag with blood in six minutes brings us a little more in tune with our vulnerabilities. Combined with the added bonus of free cookies and orange juice, and the dramatically altered effect caffeine or alcohol can have on you following the procedure, it's something everyone should go through routinely. It also kind of irks me when perfectly healthy people say they don't do it because they're "afraid of needles". You're going to opt out of helping to save lives because you can't stand seeing your own blood run out of you? And you want to do what for a living? Cook? Get used to carving off pieces of your flesh while you've got ten orders of grilled salmon on your hands, and watching latex gloves slowly fill with your own blood. "How did I get all this port wine reduction on my apron? OH MY GOD!"

~"being in love's a lot like searing off a piece of fish. There's that initial sizzle that gets you all excited, but then, if your pan's not hot enough, it ends up sticking and getting all ruined and messy and... I don't know where I'm going with this."